The exhibit was inspired by the Civil War poem “Native Guard” by Natasha Trethewey, the current two-term U.S. poet laureate and the director of Emory’s creative writing program. The poem begins with an epigraph by Frederick Douglass: “If this war is to be forgotten, then I ask in the name of all things sacred what shall men remember?”

Pellom McDaniels III, faculty curator of MARBL’s African American Collections and Emory associate professor of African American Studies, and Paige Knight, Emory Libraries archival photographer and digital photography coordinator, are co-curators of the exhibit, which will run through the end of February.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for MARBL to explore the possibilities of creating different ways to use our materials,” McDaniels says.

The five photographs reflect on aspects of African American life during the war, including womanhood, manhood, labor and commerce, childhood and education, and life as a soldier. Knight created the compositions using MARBL materials selected by McDaniels, as well as other items they both contributed such as shells, dried flowers, old pocket watches, and 19th century clay marbles, which emphasizes the three-dimensionality of the lives of African Americans as a whole.

“These images express elegance, strength, and determination,” Knight says. “The photographs extend the dialogue with the poem; they provide a sense of time, place, ideals, and opportunities. In essence, we created a collection of curated memories for this exhibition.”

McDaniels says the exhibit is “an example of how MARBL materials can be used to interpret the past and think about history.”

“I really hope we can attract new researchers to MARBL as well,” McDaniels says. “If we can create these types of spaces to demonstrate how our materials can be used, I think more people will be attracted to us as a resource – artists, in particular, who can use MARBL materials for their purposes.”

Trethewey’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning collection of poems, also titled “Native Guard,” is being adapted into a play, a collaboration between Emory’s Center for Creativity and the Arts and Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre that is part of a national program to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. There will be a free public reading of the play on Friday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. in the Schwartz’s Theater Lab. For information about reservations, read the Arts at Emory press release.

The Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts is located at 1700 N. Decatur Rd., Atlanta 30322. Parking is available in the Fishburne deck. More information on the Schwartz Center can be found here.